Apoptosis
by Kuroi Uma
Summary: When Quatre suddenly dies, Dr. Sally Po starts fearing for the other former gundam pilots' lives. A race against time, a battle versus an invisible enemy, a medical enigma. A story about life's frailty and the inevitability of death.
1. Sally

WARNING: This story features main character deaths.

 ** _Apoptosis_**

 **SALLY**

The clip-clopping of my shoes seemed to echo eerily down the cold sterile corridor as I made my way to Iria Winner. As a doctor, I immediately noticed her pale complexion and wringing hands, tell-tale signs of anxiety. Her eyes were huge on her haunted face as she met my gaze. I knew very well the pain of losing a patient, but I had no idea what it was like to lose a brother.

'Thank you for coming.' She took my outstretched hand in both of hers.

'Thank you for calling me.' I nodded in earnest gratitude. 'I'm sure we'll find something that'll help us establish the cause and ensure the others' safety.'

'If anyone has any chance of succeeding, it's you, doctor. My brother spoke very highly of you.'

'I thought very highly of your brother myself, Dr Winner.'

She managed to give me a grateful – however strained – smile before the door we'd been flanking opened between us and a black-haired full-bearded doctor stepped out. He must have been in his early thirties, and looked as unaffected by the heavy atmosphere surrounding us as only someone thoroughly accustomed to death could. His eyes fell on Iria first.

'We're ready to start the autopsy, Dr Winner.'

'Very well.' She motioned towards me with her head. 'This here's Dr Sally Po, a military surgeon and close friend of the family. She'll be stepping in for me if you don't mind, Dr Nichols.'

'Of course not.' The man turned fully to me, smiling politely. 'Dr Albert Nichols, pathologist.' He introduced himself and I shook his hand.

'Pleased to meet you, Dr Nichols.'

'Shall we begin then?'

I was ready to follow him through the door when Iria's hand perched lightly on my shoulder. There was something desperate about the way she met my eyes. 'Dr Po… Please, don't let my brother's death be in vain.'

XXX

As I waited by the cashier for my coffee, I wondered what I'd tell the tortured woman, sitting at one of the canteen tables only a few metres behind me. She'd laid all and her last hopes on me and I had failed her. In the space of a couple hours, both Iria's confidence and mine had been completely and irreversibly crushed and – as usual – I was left to meet a patient's next-of-kin with bad news. It wouldn't have been so hard had there not possibly been four other lives in line… Lives I had personal reason to fight for and preserve, lives that were now a step closer to what might be their inevitable end.

I paid hastily for the coffee, too absorbed by my self-condemning thoughts to thank the attendant, and wandered like a lost soul back to where Iria sat, turning her already empty cup in her hands and waiting. Waiting for whatever information she believed I was withholding from her, waiting for me to turn her lost brother into a posthumous hero.

From up close she looked almost hopeful.

'Cardiorespiratory arrest.' She said once I'd taken my seat. 'Did you confirm it?'

Staring at my cup, I nodded. My neck felt stiff, nearly refusing to obey. 'We found no evidence of anything else.' Somehow I managed to shake my head and then raise it to meet her eyes. She could sense the ominous news already or maybe it was the painfully twisted line of my lips that gave it away. 'All organs looked perfect. He was an extremely healthy person.'

'He was.' Iria agreed dejectedly, but then quickly rallied. 'Even the heart and lungs? Because it was those two that brought us here in the first place.'

I nodded. 'I read the file. Shortness of breath and erratic heartbeat… Surely you thought—'

'A panic attack. It could be nothing else. Quatre was young and healthy, but he had lived through a war. Not just that but he had been in the very middle of it.'

'I know.'

'He died a couple days later… Every test, every exam… It was all inconclusive. Even the medication I prescribed him could only do so much.'

'Didn't you consider an exploratory thoracotomy? Or maybe a laparotomy as well?'

'It was next on our list… Seems time was shorter than we anticipated.' She appeared to run out of energy then, deflating right in front of me.

'We've collected a few samples.' I resumed, unable to let her be overcome by defeat as I had almost been myself, minutes earlier. 'Heart tissue, lung tissue… We're hoping a microscopic examination might show us something we may have missed.'

Iria nodded dismissively, but I held on to my words, allowing them to restore my faith in medicine and myself. There was still a lot of work to be done.

XXX

'Dr Po?'

I shifted in my seat at Dr Nichols' voice, but could not take my eyes off the ocular lens. 'It looks… But it cannot be!'

'Unless this is some new sort of autoimmune disease.'

'I know, but… I don't think I've ever even heard of anything like this.'

When I finally pulled away from the microscope, I found the pathologist watching me closely as if he feared for my sanity or pitied me for seemingly denying what would have otherwise been an exciting discover. 'Perhaps you should consult a specialist?'

'That might be a good idea.'

'I've got someone —.'

'I'm sorry, Dr Nichols, but I'll have to find someone back home. I must return to my patients… Maybe the answers to our remaining questions lie within their still beating hearts?'

'Yes…' he conceded somewhat reluctantly. 'You should not waste time lest you lose another patient.'

Despite the fact that I knew his interest in the case was much more academic than humanitarian, I suddenly felt sorry for the man. Working with the dead wasn't always as exciting as it might seem. 'Why don't you join my team, Dr Nichols? Only temporarily. I don't expect to need another necropsy related to this case, but we can always use a good pathologist.'

'I'd love to join you, Dr Po. Thank you for the opportunity.'

'Good. Would you mind if I took a look at your slide?'

XXX

'Apoptosis.'

'A-pop-what?' Duo Maxwell asked alarmed as he sat in front of my desk in his hospital gown.

'Apoptosis.' I repeated looking instead at Wufei, who still stood by the door looking permanently uncomfortable. The interminable tests and boring routine had started to wear on their nerves. It was not surprising that stagnation should bother former gundam pilots more than possible death looming over their still young shoulders. 'Programmed cellular death.'

'Yeah, that surely clarifies things a lot, doc.'

'Let her explain, Maxwell.'

'It means something within Quatre's organism sent a signal for his heart and lung cells to self-destruct…and they obliged. It's not an unnatural process, you see. Apoptosis happens in healthy living beings as well. It's a renovation process. A way for old cells to give way to new ones.'

'So our cells are committing suicide. That it?'

'Indiscriminately.' Wufei added, and I nodded.

'I guess you could say that. Yes. Though we still have to confirm _your_ cells are acting that way too or if Quatre's was an isolated case, an abomination.'

For a long moment they were silent. I wondered what they were thinking… Had Duo understood what I had said? Had they grasped the implications? All the tests we had run up until that moment had been for naught. At most, they had dismissed the existence of any underlying or concomitant conditions and confirmed the former pilots' perfect health, but that meant nothing if we took Quatre's case into consideration and now new tests would be run.

'So…' Duo had to be the one to brave the silence. 'What happens now?'

'Now that we know what we're looking for, we must redo your tests in order to establish whether you do have the same condition as Quatre and – if you don't – whether you have any chances of developing it.'

'And if we _do_ have it?' Wufei seemed to be looking at a worst case scenario.

'Then we must find a way to stop it.'

'And if you can't find a cure then—.'

'Let's not go there yet.' I pleaded. For now I wanted to stay positive, confident. I wanted to move forward, not to examine the what-ifs. We'd already lost Quatre… I couldn't bear the thought of losing anyone else. 'Have you heard from Heero? Trowa maybe?'

'For all we know, they may already be dead.'

XXX

A knock on my office door awoke me. I was nothing short of horrified to realise I'd fallen asleep on top of my desk with a strewn pile of paper for a pillow. My computer's screensaver was on, but I could clearly recall I'd been reading a research on autoimmune diseases when exhaustion got the better of me.

'Dr Po?' the knocking returned, followed closely by the voice of Dr Karen Winston, my team's youngest member and our only clinical pathology expert.

'Come in.' I croaked, searching for the water bottle I usually kept in hand, but that too I had managed to misplace.

'Are you alright, doctor?'

'Yes, fine.'

She took a seat, suddenly sheepish, and I fought the urge to apologise for my tone. It wasn't simply the tiredness and the pressure, but the fact that I could _not_ deal with her concern at that particular moment. In front of me, Dr Winston shifted uncertainly and I could sense she would remain silent unless I urged her to speak. 'So? Any new leads?'

'That's what I've come to talk to you about.' She confided, looking positively dejected. I was too tired to register it though. 'We found no indicators in either the blood or urine samples…'

'What about the CSF?'

'Clean.'

'Dammit.' I swore quietly, unable to stop myself, then quickly apologised. The X-rays, ECG, CT scans, MRI, Doppler and echocardiography had revealed nothing either, but rather than a sign of health I could only take that as a warning. Quatre had been healthy too and then suddenly… 'Perhaps it's time we considered more invasive tests.'

Dr Winston looked surprised. 'Dr Po, I… I know this is probably none of my business, but… Don't you think this is going a bit too far? These young men are clinically healthy and all tests we've run so far only confirm it.'

'I cannot take any chances. If you want out, Dr Winston, you're free to go. I'd prefer you stayed though, if you're still willing. We're still going to need your help and expertise.'

She sighed. 'Any word from the immunologists?'

'None so far, but I reckon that cannot bode well…' I shook my head, hoping the despair, brewing amidst the clouds of tiredness that seemed to have permanently settled there, would dissipate. 'Angioscopy, bronchoscopy… Maybe a lung biopsy while we're at it. I need to make sure—.'

I stopped when the door flung open, banging loudly against the wall, and raised my weary eyes. Trowa Barton stood at the threshold, one hand supporting him against the doorframe, the other fastened on his shirt right above his heart. 'Your message said accelerated heartbeat and…difficulty breathing.' He panted, meeting my shocked gaze. Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead.

He was out before I left my seat.

XXX

'So you wish to open my chest and cut out a piece of my heart.' Trowa made it sound a lot more dramatic than it actually was. Or maybe he was just being straight-forward and I was the one horrified by how fragile he looked, sitting pale and haggard on the hospital bed.

'It's a very small sample, nearly microscopic but I wish to take a good look at your heart and lungs. I'm convinced there must be a sign, something that cannot be observed post-mortem or in any of the tests we've run so far.'

He sighed. We both knew there weren't many options. Quatre had died so quickly after the first signs we could already count ourselves lucky he was still alive at all. 'Fine.' He said. 'But if I die you have to tell Catherine.'

'Why don't you call her now and let her know what's happening?'

'No.'

And it was that.

'Very well… I'll send a nurse to prep you up for surgery right away. We shouldn't waste another second.'

I left before he could protest or before the lost look on his face might make me change my mind. Wufei was waiting for me in the corridor, his arms crossed in a pose reminiscent of Heero. Now our only missing former pilot.

'You really think he will survive this operation?'

'His symptoms have subsided and we have one of the best anaesthesiologists of the ESUN on our team.' I _was_ confident we could do it. 'He'll make it, Wufei, and we might be able to add another piece to the puzzle. Maybe even get close to ending this nightmare.'

He stared at me neither agreeing nor disagreeing, but completely motionless and expressionless. For some reason, it always failed to bother me when it was one of those young men who did it. When he pushed away from the wall and set off down the corridor towards his own room, he added over his shoulder. 'I'll call Maxwell so he can say his goodbyes anyways. After the surgery, you should go home, Sally. Get some rest.'

I stood there for a long moment after he was gone, fighting back tears.

* * *

Glossary of Medical Terms:

 _Autopsy/Necropsy -_ examination of the corpse to determine the cause of death.

 _Cardiorespiratory arrest -_ when both heart and lungs stop working.

 _Exploratory thoracotomy -_ a surgery in which the thorax is cut open so doctors can search for possible problems.

 _Laparotomy -_ a surgery in which the abdomen is cut open. Aka _celiotomy._

 _Autoimmune disease -_ a disease which causes the body's immune system to attack the body itself.

 _Anatomical pathology -_ the branch of pathology that studies organs and tissues.

 _Clinical pathology -_ the branch of pathology that studies body fluids (blood, urine, CSF, etc).

 _CSF -_ cerebrospinal fluid.

 _ECG -_ Eletrocardiogram, also EKG. You can see an example of a normal ECG on this story's cover.

 _CT-scan -_ Computerized Tomography. A type of diagnostic imaging test.

 _MRI -_ Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Also a type of imaging test.

 _Doppler -_ A type of ultrasound test that evaluates blood flow.

 _Echocardiography -_ Also echocardiogram. An ultrasound of the heart which often includes the above mentioned Doppler scan as well.

 _Angioscopy -_ an endoscopy or a video of the inside of the blood vessels.

 _Bronchoscopy -_ an endoscopy of the airways from nose to lungs.

 _Post-mortem_ \- after death.

* * *

 **A.N.:** In case you, readers, are wondering... This story won't really have any pairings. There'll be some implications here and there, but whether you read them as friendship or something more it's entirely up to you. :) Thanks for reading!


	2. Duo

**DUO**

We sat in Trowa's hospital bedroom from the moment they wheeled him away to surgery to the moment they brought him back. We didn't eat, we didn't sleep and Chang certainly didn't speak either. It wouldn't have bothered me much hadn't it reminded me that the only buddy I could strike up a decent conversation with was now gone. Forever.

I filled the silence with countless monologues anyway, updating Chang on all the irrelevant aspects of my life, making promises in case I didn't die. I promised to marry Hilde, promised to take my job more seriously, promised to start cleaning up after myself, swore off the junk food… Wufei didn't complain. Not even once. But though he didn't speak, he didn't look as calm and collected as he used to either. It was clear apprehension was eating even at _his_ nerves.

Our relief at Trowa's survival and speedy recovery didn't last long though. For sooner than expected we were all back at his bedside, all gathered to listen to Sally's news… By her face I couldn't tell whether those news would be good or bad, but I started to suspect – as she stood there staring numbly at the three of us – that either Trowa was fucked or he was very thoroughly fucked.

'So?' I urged her on when the silence started driving me nuts. 'What's up with Trowa?'

She sighed. The lilt in my voice, my attempt at lightening the mood, seeming to only make it plunge. 'I have good news and bad news.'

'Ya wish to know which one we'd like to hear first?'

'Just let her talk, Maxwell.' Chang immediately chastised me, which seemed to be the only thing he deemed worth opening his mouth to do lately. The bastard.

'Bad news is we've found evidence of apoptosis in the samples we collected from Trowa's heart and lungs…'

'Okay, so the a-pop-thingy's killin' him too just as it did Quatre. What's _good_ about _that_?' I had been growing steadily irritated as days went by, because the whole situation just seemed to be completely out of my depths… What, with all the medical jargon and nonsensical tests… I often felt like we were prisoners in a concentration camp. Undergoing daily torture just so some high-up could see how long we'd last.

'The good news is that, now that we've confirmed how the disease works, it should be easier to find the cause and devise a treatment plan, perhaps even find a cure.'

Whatever few hours of rest the doctor had managed to squeeze in between the surgery and bringing us those news, had succeeded in renewing her hopes. I had to admit I quite liked that about her. How she always seemed so confident and upbeat even when people were dying around her. Well, perhaps not _dying_. Not just yet.

'I take it we're getting treated too?'

She nodded. 'We'll test our treatment protocol on Trowa, but as soon as we've seen any kind of improvement we're going to adapt it into a prophylactic protocol and medicate you as well. Preventively. I'd like you to remain in the hospital though, meanwhile, just in case you start displaying any signs.'

It was my turn to sigh and scratch my head. 'I guess I'll have to call Hilde after all…'

XXX

'Duo!' the door banged against the wall as Hilde burst into the room. She looked scarier than the a-pop-thingy sounded. 'Why didn't you tell me?'

'Uh… Yeah, well… Ya see…'

'And poor Quatre…' she teared up at that and, suddenly, I had an armful of Hilde. It was relieving not to be under her stabbing glare, but now I had tears to deal with.

'I just didn't wish to worry you in vain. I'm fine! See? Sally's run all kinds of crazy tests and neither Chang nor I have got any bad results. We're as healthy as horses!'

'Why isn't she discharging you then?' she pulled away to meet my gaze again, and I was horrified to realise her tearful eyes were even scarier than her angry ones. Or maybe it was the concern, the raw fear I found staring back at me that was so unsettling. The realisation that, deep down, I too was damn scared.

'She's just paranoid. Ya know how doctors are! And Chang's life's also on the line. Ya know those two are close… In a funny awkward way I haven't been able to figure out yet, but still…'

'She's hiding something from you. She _must_ be! She must have seen something in your tests… She couldn't hold you here otherwise.'

'Uh, Hilde? Calm down.' I cupped her cheek reassuringly, smiling my most charming smile. 'Sally's a doc. She knows what she's doing and she says she might have a treatment for us if Trowa's works.'

Hilde finally seemed to accept my words then. I watched her glance around the room for a moment, taking in its sterility, frowning painfully before turning back to me. 'Did Trowa call Cathy? Or is he as stubborn and stupid as you are?'

XXX

If Trowa hadn't been confined to his bed he would've surely killed me. I could see the predatory gleam in his narrowed green eyes from miles away even as Catherine fumbled over him. She had turned out to be even scarier than Hilde and only stopped yelling at her brother when Sally had intervened, _and_ the black haired doctor, the one with the black beard whose name I could never recall and who seemed to show up from time to time to circle us like a vulture. And even then, even after she had stopped torturing our ears, you could still hear her complaining, however in grouchy mumbles.

'I can't believe you did this to me…' she was going on – again – as we waited for Sally to arrive and update us on developments. 'You could have died! You could have died and I'd have been thousands of miles away completely oblivious… You wouldn't even have the decency to say goodbye to your sister.'

From time to time, as she finished fluffing his pillows or smoothing the bed sheets or watering the withering flowers on the windowsill, Trowa would let out a weary sigh, but that was as much of a protest as he was willing to put up. I suspected he had nothing to say to her that might clear his case and – not being as proficient at finding plausible excuses as I – chose to be silent. Hilde and I showed our discreet support by giving him a frantic nod or a thumbs up. Though he didn't actually do it, I could see him rolling his eyes at us. The ungrateful bastard. What did he want us to do? Defy his devilish sister?

'I'm sorry I'm late.' The door opened and the doctor walked in. For once she looked truly rested and optimistic.

Trowa's crazy sister was the first to step forward. 'Any news, doctor? Is the treatment working?'

'Well, his vitals are all good and stable, and his test results remain unchanged. For now all we can do is wait, but it's safe to assume the treatment has presented positive results so far…' she turned towards me and Chang. 'That's why I'll be establishing a prophylactic protocol for you two starting today.'

'Yay… Drugs!' I tried to cheer myself up. Hospitals and doctors and meds and bonner-killing gowns made me feel like an old man standing at the edge of his grave. 'Can we include something more… _recreational_ in that protocol of yours?'

'No, Duo.' Sally shook her head, though my joke did put a good-humoured smile on her lips. 'Not this time.'

XXX

We had been in treatment for two days when I felt the first symptoms of the a-pop-thingy. I slid out of bed in the morning and made my way to the adjacent bathroom. Hilde still slept peacefully on the bumpy hospital couch. I barely made it to the sink before my chest started burning with the effort, it was hard to breathe and, no matter how much air I managed to suck in, it never seemed to be enough. My heart was pounding so fast and erratically I feared it would burst.

'Hilde…' I called, but there wasn't air enough in my lungs to carry my aborted shout all the way to her. Everything began to blur around me and I fell on my knees, clinging viciously to the bowl of the sink now above me. For a moment, all pain, all sound, all thought seized to exist and then… There was only darkness.

I woke up back in my bed. A plastic mask on my face and IV tubes hooked to my arms. Strangely enough, I wanted to laugh. Because surely I must look like some sort of alien. It just didn't suit Duo Maxwell, the God of Death, to be strapped to a hospital bed and wrapped up in plastic tubes. I didn't have the strength to laugh though, or speak for that matter, but I could faintly hear a conversation going on nearby. Maybe at the foot of my bed, maybe by the door or maybe even beyond the thin hospital walls.

'So…' a scared young woman spoke, voice trembling, hesitant. 'He's going to die?'

Whoa! I hoped it wasn't me they were talking about though deep down I knew better.

'We can't tell what's going to happen yet, but the treatment seems to be working for Trowa so we'll start Duo on the same drugs and dosages right away.'

'But what about the treatment he was already on? Will the new one work even if the old one didn't?' it was Hilde. I would've recognised her voice anywhere, even with the sudden fear and overwhelming desperation that seemed to have seeped into her every word.

'I don't know.' The second woman was Sally. I knew it was her though the optimism from the other day was completely gone, replaced by a bone deep weariness that I was horrified to realise bordered on hopelessness. I shouted at her in my head. Shouted at her not to give up, not to let me die, and somehow my frantic thoughts seemed to reach her. 'But we must still try.'

XXX

'So you opened my chest?' I asked curving my neck as far as it would go, but underneath white sheets and bandages I could discern nothing.

'We had to confirm the diagnosis.' The doctor said somewhat reluctant. 'I'm sorry, Duo. I know it may not have been what you'd have chosen had you had a choice, but—.'

'Nah, nah. 'S fine. I'm still here! 'S all that matters. 'Sides chicks dig scars, ya know.' I smiled conciliatorily at her, trying to infect my audience with my trademark nonchalance. Trowa – on a wheel chair – cracked a small smile, but the others seemed unaffected. Hilde was the one that bothered me most…

I hadn't seen her smile _once_ since I had woken up, after my collapse and the surgery, and every time she looked at me it felt as if she were staring at a ghost. A ghost that might vanish at the blink of an eye. That was not who I was. I was _way_ stronger than that. I thought, by now, she'd have known.

'And treatment seems to be working.' Sally added, nodding, pleased at herself. 'Or at least it seems to be keeping you stable while we try to figure out the origins of this disease, the intricacies of how it works and how we can cure it.'

'Have you made any progress in any of those areas?' it was Hilde who asked, quiet yet hopeful, confident yet afraid. It pained me to hear it.

'We examined the tissue we collected from Duo's heart immediately after the biopsy and were able to watch the apoptosis taking place. It progresses steadily on live tissue and it's…' she hesitated then, meeting all of our expectant gazes in turn. 'Horribly and irreversibly destructible. A natural process gone berserk.'

'So the cells we've already lost…' Trowa seemed to understand the whole medical nonsense better than I ever could. I wanted to thank him for asking the pertinent questions, but that would've been ridiculously heartfelt and pathetically cheesy.

'They're gone forever.' The doctor confirmed, her expression growing even darker if that was possible. 'Your hearts will never be the same again.'

I had the distinct feeling – looking at Hilde – that nothing ever would.


	3. Wufei

**WUFEI**

Maxwell's death took its toll on Sally. Not only was he another victim of the mysterious disease that haunted us, but a proof of the inefficacy of her established treatment. Despite Trowa's living-breathing self seemingly proving otherwise. Schbeiker had been very vocally and visibly devastated and her overwhelming grief had sent Sally flying out of the room. I suspected she blamed herself for giving the black haired woman hope when everything was – in reality – nothing but uncertain.

I left the death-room too. Not because my former teammate's passing particularly surprised me, but because Schbeiker's painful wails had threatened my eardrums with an even worse demise than Maxwell's. And, against my better judgement, I went in search of Sally.

Her office door was locked, which – had it been any other day – would have been a clear indicator of her absence, but this time I knew she was inside. Hiding. Hiding from the world and possibly even from herself. I knocked though I did not expect her to answer.

'Sally, let me in.'

Nothing but the quiet rustling of fabric.

'I can't lock pick. I'm not Max— _Tā mā de*_.' I fought the urge to kick the door open. 'Sally, open up. We need to talk.'

'About what?' she snapped, using anger as a shield. 'There's nothing I can say, Wufei. Nothing I can do that'll make it any better.'

'You can let me in. You can let me in or I'll break down the door.'

'I'll call security.'

'They can't get to me on time, woman. Just open the damn door.'

She did.

For whatever reason – because I failed to see how my argument could have convinced her – she opened the door and I found myself looking at her hollow tear-stained cheeks and sleep-deprived red-rimmed eyes.

'I told you I've nothing to say.' She protested even as I pushed my way past her and flopped down stubbornly and audaciously on her desk chair.

'You'll figure something out.' I reassured her. 'Or I won't leave. Not until you do.'

Sally locked the door again, seemingly recomposed, but even though her face was a blank and inscrutable mask, she carefully avoided my eyes. 'The immunologists don't know what it is.' She said finally, suddenly. 'No other disease behaves quite like this… And there's also the fact that only _you_ seem to be affected.'

'You think it's something our mobile suits caused? Is that why you've had us locked up in here long before any of us started presenting any signs of disease? Is it some sort of hunch you had?' I couldn't help asking. It _was_ the only thing Quatre, Duo, Trowa and I had in common, but somehow it just didn't feel likely… Sally remained silent. 'Wouldn't Zechs —.'

'I called him. I warned him _and_ Lucrezia, but he says he's fine and he isn't leaving Mars right now. They'll let me know if anything changes.'

'And Yuy?'

'There's been no word from him.' She shook her head, her eyes lowering slowly. It was clear to me what was going on through her head even though she would not dare voice it. 'I don't think he's coming.'

For a long time we were silent. If Yuy really _was_ dead then I would be the only one left. The only one still unaffected by whatever evil was set on killing us former gundam pilots, the only one with no signs of apoptosis…that we knew of at least. I could see the bags under Sally's eyes, her trembling restless hands, her unusually large clothes. If this was what Maxwell's death and Trowa's illness had turned her into then I couldn't even fathom what would be left of her were I to become sick and die as well.

And yet…

We knew it was only a matter of time.

'So what's the next step?' I finally breached the unsurmountable barrier.

She took a deep shuddery breath, closing her eyes, then expelled it. Somehow that simple act seemed to bring back a little bit of her lost confidence. Her eyes met mine with renewed conviction. 'Now we must find out why the treatment didn't work and try to fix it. Maybe we'll need to operate on Trowa again to check if it's really working… And if it isn't then we must discover why his condition's stabilised. I fear those are our best leads at the moment… Unless the autopsy reveals something new.'

XXX

The autopsy did nothing but confirm what we already knew. Maxwell was otherwise completely healthy, same as Winner had been, and there were no signs of an underlying disease which might have triggered the apoptosis. Or so Sally informed us as soon as Dr Nichols was done. The man had shed some light on the problem though by suggesting a genetic origin, however unlikely given our distinct ethnicities, to the mysterious disease.

Our DNAs were immediately collected for sequencing and, surprisingly, an exogenous codon was identified. A single combination of nucleotides which appeared to have been artificially inserted in both Trowa's DNA _and_ mine and multiplied with our cells becoming a part of us.

A shortcut to self-destruction.

'I have already informed Lucrezia. They'll get Milliardo's DNA sequenced as well to confirm, but it's very likely you were genetically altered during your training years by the engineers who built your mobile suits and planned operation meteor. This is probably a sort of built-in security measure, a way to eliminate the danger of surviving gundam pilots in a post-war world. Your age… It's very likely no mere coincidence. It's been exactly 10 years since the wars.'

I laughed because there was nothing else to be done, because when we thought we had finally gotten rid of the engineers, left behind the war and our pasts, they had all come back to haunt us. Our bodies had been tampered with and we had not even known it… I tried to remember a single time, an isolated occurrence in which this might have happened or anything that struck me as even remotely suspicious but, as hard as I tried, I couldn't find it. I found nothing and was otherwise left to wonder how they had accomplished such a feat without me noticing.

'Did you know?' I turned to Barton, who sat scowling in his wheelchair; his sister had been – thankfully – left out of our meeting this time.

He shook his head. 'No.'

Looking at his face, I knew he shared my horror and I felt somewhat vindicated at that. 'Yuy might know. He had a different relationship with his mobile suit's engineer.'

'Heero's dead, Chang.' Trowa's voice was unstable with sudden anger or maybe it was sheer despair, fear even. 'And we're next.'

'You don't know that.' I informed him. The sudden paleness of Sally's face bothering me deeply. 'He might still show up.'

'Even if he does there's nothing he can do to change it. He'll be just another victim in the end.'

'No.' the doctor interrupted us, shaking her head slowly. 'If Heero remembers, if he knows _any_ thing… It might be useful to us.' She paused, meeting our gazes with a seriousness and a determination I had already begun to miss. 'Do you know how we can find him? Can you recall anything that might help us search for him?'

'Have you tried talking to his woman?'

'His woman?' Sally frowned at me. 'I wasn't aware he even had one.'

'He means Relena.' Trowa clarified.

'Oh! Yes… I've already contacted Relena, but she hasn't seen him in months.'

There was silence for a long moment then. A proof that none of us really knew a thing about Heero Yuy or whoever he'd become after the wars.

'Well…'

'Let's assume he's dead.' Barton seemed to find it amusing how we'd come full circle. I still thought Yuy would show for whatever reason. 'What now?'

Resigned, Sally didn't even protest. 'I'm calling in a specialist.'

XXX

'Dr Sally Po?' a dark skinned, dark haired man in a suit suddenly stood at the threshold of Barton's bedroom where we had gotten used to gathering to either discuss the impossible case or just _be,_ as we seemed to be doing more and more of lately. I suspected, in face of our imminent demise.

'Ah!' Sally's face lit up surprisingly at the sight of that stranger. 'You must be Dr Kavi Patel.'

'Yes. That would be me.'

We watched quietly as they shook hands, then exchanged rushed words. A dialogue heavy with medical jargon in which we were referred to as 'the patients'. It was unsettling to be present during that conversation, annoying to be treated as if we weren't there. Trowa and Catherine easily overcame that by striking up a conversation of their own, about circuses and animals and jugglers and what-not. My mind was left to wander.

I thought, perhaps for the first time in years, about my long lost wife, Meilan, and wondered – however illogical a reasoning it was – if anyone would cry for me when I was gone. Sally, surely, but what would be her reasons? Catherine and Hilde cried because they loved Trowa and Duo respectively, they cried because they would miss them, because their death (or imminent death in Trowa's case) would leave a hole in their lives.

My death wouldn't.

My death would leave no holes. So why would the doctor standing only a few steps away cry when I was gone? Would it really be for me? Or would they be the tears of a professional who thought they had failed in doing their job? Would she miss me? If so why? Did she, perhaps, feel something akin to love for me? But why _would_ she?

'Trowa, Wufei.' Sally had turned back to us, trying – as had become usual – to appear confident. 'This is the specialist I had told you about. One of the best geneticists in all ESUN, Dr Kavi Patel.'

We nodded politely at the sympathetic looking doctor. I couldn't speak for Barton, but I had begun to lose interest in the technicalities of our case after the latest findings that our genes had been artificially modified. It wasn't so much that medicine did not interest me, but the fact that I knew what the men who had raised and trained us were (or had been) capable of. I saw no salvation for us. None at all. Yet I had no heart to tell Sally to give up, no voice to say there was no point.

XXX

We barely slept those days.

Barton because his sister didn't. He said she wept at night when she thought he wasn't listening. A shadow of the determined restless woman she was during the day. Sally because her search for answers and solutions kept leading her further and further until she reached a brick wall and had to start over. As for me… I felt just as restless when the moon was up as Catherine Bloom pretended to be when the sun was up.

Usually, I sat in my bedroom and stared out the window at the starlit winter skies, or wandered the hospital alleys like the bitter ghost of some long lost patient. That night in particular, I did neither, but went straight to a certain doctor's office.

It wasn't the first time I found Sally sleeping on top of her papers. It was, however, the first time I awoke her instead of simply closing the door and leaving. The inside of her office was dark, a possible sign that she had fallen asleep before sunset and therefore been out for a few hours. It certainly took her an awfully long time to make sense of where she was and who I was and what was happening. When she finally did, her eyes widened and she reached out to me over her desk.

'Don't tell me—'

'No.' I shook my head. 'I'm fine.'

For now.

She let out a deep breath. 'What's wrong then?'

I asked myself the same question. Why had I awoken her? And, even more importantly, why had I awoken her without sorting out my reasons for doing it first? My face must have betrayed my confusion for she smiled – or tried to rather – as reassuringly as possible.

'It's alright.' She said and though it should've made me feel childish and stupid, should've made me angry, it didn't. Her tone wasn't condescending, but understanding.

'Sally.' I began, still unsure what to say. The weight of my almost certain death – or was it? For there had been no symptoms yet of any kind – looming over us. 'What am I to you?'

Why will you cry when I'm gone? And how can I know that?

The thoughtful silence that took over the room wasn't permeated by shock or outrage, merely by a hint of surprise. 'Does it really matter?' she asked finally, clearly unable to name it.

'No. I guess not.'

It was the truth and, when she smiled at me, an excruciating pain froze my lungs and wrapped around by racing heart.

* * *

 _*Tā mā de -_ Chinese equivalent of "shit", damn it" or the F word. Source: _Chinese Language Blog_


	4. Trowa

**TROWA**

Sally refused to operate on Chang. I wasn't surprised, but he seemed to be. He insisted, as soon as he was stable and able to breathe normally again, that she biopsy his heart to confirm the presence of the disease. She said there was no need to confirm it and that they should start him on the same drugs I was already taking. We didn't know for sure they were working though, but the doctor seemed to be ignoring that fact for the moment, trying to keep the doubts as far from her mind as possible.

Or so I thought.

In reality, Sally must have been dwelling on that one uncertainty for quite a while. The sudden appearance of Chang's symptoms was the spark that lit the fuse and, I realised far too late, I was the one bound to take the blunt of the explosion.

'Is your sister around?' the doctor asked peering into my room. I shook my head and watched with numb perplexity as she locked the door behind her. 'I have a proposition to make.'

I looked at her, _really_ looked at her, for the first time in… Ever. She was pale and haggard, visibly tired, but her hair and clothes were still impeccable. I had expected Chang's transition from 'possibly sick' to 'definitely sick' to completely destabilise her, but it seemed instead to have filled her with a new sense of duty, a painfully raw kind of unwavering determination. She stood there, face blank, until I was forced to speak.

'I'm listening.'

'I want to reopen your chest. I wish to collect another sample to confirm the treatment's working.'

She meant she didn't wish to waste Chang's time, didn't wish to give him ineffective meds. Things had just become personal. I could also see she blamed herself for that, for placing one patient's life above another's, but I bore no ill feelings towards her. Perhaps she might have assigned our case over to someone else, someone impartial, but there was no better doctor than Sally and if she had, in fact, delegated the case we'd all have lost for it.

The way I saw it, if the treatment _wasn't_ working I was going to die anyway – sooner rather than later – and if the treatment _was_ working then… I didn't think the surgery itself would kill me. My body was stronger than it looked.

So Sally was partial, but that was because she was human and humans were hardly ever any other way. Her flailed human status didn't make her decision any less accurate in this case. 'Fine.'

'What?'

'Fine. Do it. Schedule the surgery.'

Her wide eyes and quivering lips told me she had clearly expected more resistance. An argument perhaps. Or maybe she'd wanted me to make her change her mind. 'Are… Are you sure?'

I shrugged. 'Tomorrow then?'

'I…' Sally shook her head, recomposing herself. 'I'll give you a couple of days to reconsider. If you don't, on the third day, we operate.'

XXX

'I believe that, given some time, we'll be able to produce a possible cure.' Dr Patel said and I scrutinised his face carefully. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I was sure there had to be _something_. A trace of doubt, a shadow of insecurity, a remote trace of uncertainty… But the man was calm, his voice bearing its usual happy lilt.

His optimism should've felt like a breath of fresh air.

It didn't.

Dr Nichols – who Sally had once told us was the one responsible for conducting the necropsies – looked the most displeased. I didn't blame him. Not that I wanted to end on his table. I was tired of being given constant and false hopes. And I was suddenly left with the nasty decision of whether I'd wait for that 'possible' cure or whether I'd let myself be operated on in order to try and save – at the very least – Chang. My symptoms had not returned, but time seemed to be running short anyway.

'Oh, that's so great, Dr Patel!' Catherine was saying. 'Isn't it great, Trowa? You'll be cured!'

I sighed, untouched by her euphoria. That earned me a vicious glare, but I ignored it. Had I been healthy she wouldn't have hesitated in being more physical in displaying her disapproval.

'We think it's great.' She turned a blinding smile on the doctor. 'We'll be looking forward to the results.'

'Thank you, Dr Patel.' Sally's smile bore the uncertainty I had been looking for. 'And if you need anything—.'

'I'll let you know.' He assured her, turning to leave. 'Excuse me. I should get back to work.'

He left with the same reassuring smile he had worn when he'd walked in. Dr Nichols followed suit, leaving the four of us to consider what had just been said.

'That's good news.' Sally said – as our official doctor she probably thought it important to share her opinion – however reluctantly.

'How long exactly do you think it'll take?' Catherine spoke again.

Of the four of us, only the women seemed to still possess any sort of motivation to go on. My sister's was clearly me. She hid her fear and her sadness afraid that if she broke down I would too. Sally's was probably Chang, though I didn't fool myself into thinking she didn't have some sort of professional interest in our case as well.

'It's hard to tell for sure, especially seeing as this isn't my area of expertise, but… I should think at least a couple of weeks.'

'A couple weeks?'

'Dr Patel and our team are creating a kind of virus which will specifically attack and destroy the codons that are causing the abnormal apoptotic cellular behaviour. That's very precise, very minutial work.'

'Ah…' Catherine pretended rather miserably to understand. I no longer bothered trying. Chang hadn't said a single word since Sally had refused to operate on him. 'Well, Trowa's fine, right? So waiting shouldn't be a problem… Right?'

The doctor met my eye, a strained smile curving her lips. She didn't know I was fine. No one did. And no one would, unless I agreed to let her cut into my chest again so she could see it with her own eyes. When she turned back to my sister she managed somehow to look slightly more optimistic. 'He seems stable so, for now, waiting shouldn't be a problem.'

Catherine's relief was almost a physical thing.

It weighed unbearably heavy on the rest of us.

XXX

It was the morning of the second day – the day I had to give Sally my answer – that Chang finally decided to speak. And to me of all people.

We were wheeling ourselves down the corridor, running away from Dr Patel's painful cheerfulness and Catherine's veiled despair. We came across an unoccupied room – the room that used to be Maxwell's – and before we knew it we had locked ourselves in. Away from all doctors and nurses and from the only two people in the world who cared about what became of us at all.

For the first time in a long time I was able to breathe.

I would've liked to have just stayed there, in the white sunlit hospital room, basking in the silence for as long as it took me to feel myself again, but my companion had his own agenda.

'I know what Sally asked you to do.' He said and erased whatever hopes I'd had of temporarily forgetting who and where I was and all the whys and what ifs of our merciless situation.

'So?'

'If you're doing it for me then don't. I don't want your death on my conscience.'

'I won't necessarily die.'

'Aren't you tired, Barton? Tired of pretending we're going to survive?' Chang was angry, frustrated, but it wasn't aimed at me. I could sense it though he tried to make it seem otherwise. 'You're going to do it, aren't you? You're letting her operate.'

I shrugged. Truth was I could no longer bring myself to care about any of it.

'If you wish to die, don't do it on Sally's table. She has enough to blame herself for. If you wish to die, then do us all a favour…wheel yourself to the balcony and jump.'

His acid tone and sharp words made me laugh. He was the only one who didn't treat me like an invalid those days and his words took a load off my shoulders, gave me a taste of the normality I sorely missed.

'Have you never wanted to die, Chang? After the war ended and our mobile suits were destroyed and nothing else made sense… Didn't you wish for it all to end?'

His eyes widened a fraction and he turned towards the window. It was a long time before he spoke again. Yet – even in the restored silence – I couldn't regain that internal peace I had found upon entering the room. Chang's words echoed in my head together with my own.

'Yes, I did wish to die once, but I never gave those thoughts any heed. I'm no coward.'

I smiled to myself. I didn't think it was cowardly… The way I saw it, it was within my rights to end my own life however I saw fit. I _had_ tried to do so once…and failed. I wondered if I'd be willing to succeed this time.

XXX

Night fell and Sally never came for my answer. So I asked Catherine to call her. I had worn myself out wheeling up and down the corridors with Chang earlier and didn't think I'd be able to make it far on my own remaining strength. My damaged heart and lungs could only do so much and – as embarrassing as it was – it was best to ask for help sooner rather than later.

The doctor came almost running. I had refused to tell my sister what it was I wanted to consult Sally about, and Catherine's worry must have certainly infected the older woman as well. She gave me a thorough once over as soon as her eyes fell on me and visibly relaxed at the reassuring sight of my unaltered self. 'Is something the matter? Are you feeling alright?' she asked just to be sure.

'Yes. I…' I met my sister's gaze, a mix of worry and confusion. Should I tell her? I knew she would be angry and try to talk me out of it, and I didn't have the energy to deal with any of it. So I had decided not to. But it didn't feel right. 'I want to do it.' I told Sally cryptically. 'Dr Patel may be longer than we can wait.'

'I understand.'

'What are you talking about?' Catherine asked, surprisingly more nervous than annoyed.

'Tomorrow then?' I ignored her.

'Eight o'clock.' The doctor nodded and left before she ended up getting caught in our family feud.

'Trowa, what's going on?'

I met my sister's eyes again and sighed discreetly. 'Catherine… I'm having another surgery to confirm the treatment's working.'

Her eyes widened. 'You're _what_? That's what's tomorrow at eight? I won't let you.'

'This is my choice. If the treatment isn't working, then… Even if I'm too far gone, Sally might still be able to save Chang.'

She shook her head incredulously. 'I want _nothing_ to do with this. If you go through with this crazy idea and you _make it_ through the surgery, I won't be here. I swear to you, Trowa. I'm not going to stand here and watch my brother die.'

The door banged shut behind her, but not before I saw the tears – welled up in her eyes – race down her cheeks. They had stopped me once… Her tears.

They couldn't stop me this time.


	5. Heero

**HEERO**

I knew who it was the moment I heard the hurried footsteps on the tiled corridor. I didn't even bother turning around in my chair.

'You're alive.' Sally whispered in a tone that was nearly frightened. I was forced to glance at her over my shoulder in some sort of acknowledgement. She made it sound like I had crawled out of the grave when she was the one who looked like a ghost. 'We didn't think you'd show.'

'Hn.' I had gathered as much from the fact that they'd thought I was dead.

She made her way around the desk to her own chair. 'You look…well.'

'I'm not. I've been taught dozens of techniques to control my heart beat and respiratory rate. I've been trained to look _well_.'

'Of course. How long?'

'A fortnight.'

'And why come now?'

'I've just returned to Earth. I had heard about Winner, but couldn't see the connection. Relena told me about the others.'

At this Sally seemed to shrink a little, her unaffected physician's mask cracking right in front of me. 'Yes, I… I'm sorry.'

'We weren't that close.' I shook my head dismissively. 'What's the situation?'

'We believe it's something the gundam engineers – or someone who worked with them more like – inserted in your DNA. A sequence that triggers the self-destruction of heart and lung cells.'

The sheet she pushed towards me read: _Genetically mediated cardiac and pulmonary cellular apoptosis._

'We don't know what exactly activated this sequence, but we're working on a possible cure and we should have something to present to you in about a week.'

'And meanwhile? No provisory treatment?'

She avoided my gaze then and let her intertwined hands fall on the desk. 'None that works.'

'Hn.'

'Is Relena with you?'

I could not pinpoint the reason for her sudden hopefulness. Perhaps she felt lonely, tired, oppressed by the amount of work and the guilt and yearned for the energy, the purpose that always accompanied Relena.

'No.'

'Does she know you're here?'

'No and I'd rather things remained that way.'

Sally's surprise was only momentary. 'I see… You're all the same.' She stood up, not giving me time to dwell on her cryptic words. 'I wish to examine you and run some routine tests, if that's alright. Just to discard the existence of any underlying conditions.'

I nodded and followed her down the corridor and into a room that would probably become my last one.

XXX

'Isn't it strange, Yuy?' I raised my head to find Chang staring out the window, his back to me. Unless he meant something outside, which I couldn't see from where I sat, I had no idea what he was talking about. I frowned, but said nothing. 'That we're the only ones left?'

Why is it strange? I wondered. To me it seemed perfectly random. We could've been the dead ones and then others would've been the 'only ones left _'_. It didn't matter who was first or who was last as long as there was an end to this thing.

My silence prodded him forward.

'We hate each other.' He sounded amused.

'No.' I could've stayed quiet, could've left it at that… It made no difference to me what he thought. But I didn't. For reasons I didn't particularly wish to examine, I didn't want him to leave thinking I hated him. 'I don't hate you.'

'I don't know why not.' He wasn't surprised, but still amused, still uncharacteristically off. 'You've plenty of reasons to.'

'Chang…' I forced him to turn the wheelchair around and face me. 'I have no idea what you're talking about.'

He sighed somewhat dejectedly, his air seeming even more distant, and made me wonder what he was up to – did he want a fight? – and what kinds of drugs he was on. Was this the end? Would I lose my mind as well?

'I guess you're right.' He suddenly conceded. 'I've just always wanted to hate you. You were perfect, a model to be followed…'

'Except that I wasn't.'

'Except that you weren't.' Chang returned my bitter smile with a nod. 'You let that woman become a weakness and then you fought for peace… For a world we had no place in. We still don't.'

'Hn.' I agreed, meeting his eyes seriously. 'But we won't be misplaced for long.'

He nodded again. Death wasn't hard for us to accept. We'd been prepared to die a lot sooner than that and in much more gruesome ways. He turned back to the window, but did not bother moving the chair. It was a beautiful day outside, sunny and full of promise.

'Do you know why they did it?'

'It was a preventive measure. To make sure no one would use us to bring about another war, destroy the peace we had all fought so hard for.'

'You _think_? Or you _know_?'

I shrugged.

'Have the colonies been avenged, Heero? Have we accomplished what we set out to do all those years ago?'

'Maybe. Maybe not.'

'Somehow… I don't think we would be dying if we hadn't.' We knew it was probably just a positive way of looking at it, an attempt at making peace with ourselves and all we represented before it was too late, but none of us remarked on it. 'I wonder… When we're so clearly out of place, why is it so hard to leave?'

XXX

The geneticist, Dr Kavi Patel, was an awfully optimistic person. He arrived at the examination room, where we sat reading in the afternoons, with a wide smile on his face and two syringes in his hands.

'This.' He said, raising the syringes slightly. 'May just be your cure.'

Sally, who stood right behind him, seemed to be significantly more grounded even though we could see she was trying hard not to let the other doctor's enthusiasm infect her. 'You're each going to get a shot. And – in a week – a reinforcement.' She explained.

Two nurses took over the job of injecting us.

'How long?' I asked as the cold liquid burned its way into my muscle.

'If it works?' the doctor frowned thoughtfully. 'A week, maybe two. And then you should start feeling better.'

We watched them go. All seeming individually way more relieved than the two of us put together. I wondered why that was… I didn't feel relieved at all. All I felt was tired, but I blamed the disease for it. A heart that was striving to simply fulfil its most basic of functions did not have the energy to waste feeding false hopes.

Chang looked even worse than I did. Most of the times he was detached and nothing at all like his old self. When he decided to speak, it often meant quiet philosophic conversations in which our pasts, presents and even our possible futures were thoroughly examined. Still, none of our little chats had ever been quite as awkward as the one we had that morning.

'Won't you call her?'

I turned – wrenched from my own thoughts – to find him staring at me. 'Who?'

'You know _who_.'

I did, but the answer was none of his business.

'No.'

'Why not?' he sounded accusing. I turned back to the book I'd been pretending to read. 'Afraid I'll think less of you for it? Are you just waiting for me to drop dead? Will you call her in tears then? Beg her to come hold you in her arms as you die?'

He was bitter, full of rage. I frowned to myself, unable to understand what that speech had meant to accomplish. Was he venting? Trying to get a reaction out of me?

'No.' I said generically, not bothering to really answer any of his questions.

I did not know why I didn't want her around, didn't want her to know… All I knew was that I didn't.

'You should…' the life, the energy, the anger, it all drained from him as suddenly as it'd come. I could barely make out the words he whispered so. 'You should call her.'

XXX

Chang died two days later. Before the 'cure' could even begin to make a difference. If it really _was_ going to… I had my reservations.

Dr Albert Nichols had to convince Sally to let him perform the necropsy. She said there was no need to, that there was nothing they could infer from the patient's body which they had not already seen in all those before him. She refused to see that particular subject cut to pieces in front of her. She didn't say his name. Not once. And amidst this chaos, I seemed to go unnoticed for the remainder of the week.

It wasn't as relieving as I had expected, being left to my own thoughts. Especially since I still wondered what Chang's words the day of the inoculation had meant… He had never liked Relena, never displayed anything but contempt whenever her image was in any way associated with ours. True, I had not had much contact with him after the wars, but surely such a radical change…

Then it struck me.

Chang had been there. He had been there since the start, had witnessed both Duo's and Trowa's deaths. He had seen Hilde's and Catherine's reactions. He had craved that for himself, that kind of devotion, and the fact that I had it, and yet was so carelessly willing to dismiss it had hit a nerve.

He was the one who was afraid, the one over conscious of others' opinions of him, the one who wanted to cry and be held. He had been _human_.

'Sally.' I paused at the threshold and waited for her to invite me in. She had been away from the hospital for the last couple of days and some of the lost colour seemed to have returned to her face.

'Heero.' She even managed a small smile. 'Please, come in.'

'You look better.'

'So do you. Think the virus is working?'

'Could be.' I shrugged as I took a seat, not bothering to tell her what I really thought… That this sudden improvement had nothing to do with the 'cure', but with the inevitable proximity of the end.

'I'm sorry you'll be the only one left.'

'Did Chang know?'

My sudden question startled her, but whether that was because of its complete randomness, or because I had dared utter his name in her presence, it was hard to tell. Either way, Sally was quick to recover. 'Know what?'

'That you cared?'

Her eyes widened a fraction and I feared for a moment that she might cry. At last, she sighed, smiling regretfully at her hands. 'He came to me one night… Asked me "What am I to you?"… I said it didn't matter… Because it didn't. He knew I cared about him.'

She had grown confident throughout her speech, finding solace in the recollection.

That night, I wrote Relena.

XXX

I could imagine what Hilde's and Catherine's reactions had been like. Relena was calm, collected, a polite smile on her face as she listened to Sally's explanation. It certainly helped matters significantly that the doctor was so optimistic about the 'cure'.

I wondered if I hadn't been selfish in calling her.

It felt awful to sit there and do nothing while she got fed false hopes. Hopes that would soon crumble. I could only hope – ironically – that she did not crumble right along with them for I wouldn't be there to pick up the pieces.

'Well…' she spoke to me, for the first time since her arrival, only once Sally had left. 'I'm glad you seem to be getting better, but were you really planning on going through all this on your own?'

Her voice sounded slightly strained. I searched her eyes, trying to understand what she was asking me. What was it that pained her? The thought that I hadn't trusted her? Or was it my supposed loneliness at such a crucial moment? Should I be in any pain other than the physical ones caused by the illness?

'Yes.' I said because something told me that was what she expected to hear. The truth however was that I was anything but alone. In a hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses and all sorts of staff it was impossible to be alone.

She sighed, but said no more. I was suddenly too tired to make any sense of her words and her actions. I had called her for a reason, a reason which I hadn't yet been able to put into words, but that I had to before it was too late.

I thought of Chang. I thought of all the things he had probably wanted to say and do, but been too repressed by the image we had sculptured of ourselves to allow himself to. And I realised I couldn't say or do them either. A 'goodbye' and a 'thank you' would have to do. That's why I had called her… For reasons of propriety.

'Relena?'

'Yes?' it took her a moment to put down her PDA. She was always present, but so was her work. When she met my eyes I almost faltered. I had hoped Sally's words had still left some room for doubt, for uncertainty about my condition, but she was smiling.

'I _am_ going to die.'

'No, you're not.' She frowned and laughed, all at once, probably unsettled by what she clearly perceived as fear and insecurity on my part. 'You'll be fine. You heard Sally.'

I knew I should have insisted, but she looked so certain I found myself wanting to believe her, even though I suspected the tiredness I'd been feeling those last few days couldn't bode well.

'Maybe you should go back to work then.' I forced myself to say. Even breathing suddenly seemed like too much of an effort. 'I should be out in a few more days.'

Those words seemed to capture her attention even more than the ones before them. 'You don't want me here anymore?'

'That's not…what I meant.'

'I'm sorry.' She said standing up and looked down at her PDA. 'I'll call my secretary and let her know I'll be taking a few days off and that I'm not to be disturbed.'

'Don't. Don't put your life aside for me. Stay if you wish, but leave if you need to.'

Her strained, worried smile was barely convincing, but she acquiesced.

XXX

'How could you not tell me you were getting worse?!'

After four deaths and countless weeks of fighting an unbeatable foe as well as sleep and grief, Sally finally lost it. I felt sorry for her – I could relate to the frustration that came with failing at what you're supposed to be the best at – but her anger did not move me.

'There's…nothing you…can do.' I informed her, cold perhaps, but truthful and I thought it was about time we all faced the truth. I couldn't even muster enough air to say a simple phrase anymore… I reckoned I didn't have long left.

'How can you say that?! After all we've done… If only you'd cooperated!'

'Sally.'

'We identified the cause! There was nothing drugs could do to stop its progress or any way in which we could bring back the cells you'd lost, but we're working on a cure! A _cure_! If only you wouldn't give up! Why do you give up? Why was I left to work with the only three gundam pilots who had never had any love of life whatsoever?'

'Sally.' I tried to call her attention to me, though I wasn't sure if she was even aware of herself. She didn't seem to realise she was crying or that her voice was pitchy at all. I cursed the raspy weakness of my own voice.

'Had it been Quatre or Duo, I'm sure—'.' The wheezing sound that came from my lungs as I suddenly failed to breathe finally caught her attention and sent her promptly into action. Only once I was breathing regularly through an oxygen mask did she hurriedly – shamefully even – wipe away her tears and apologise. Though she avoided my eye, I knew she was waiting for me to speak.

'Once I'm gone…' I panted, pulling the mask back on to replenish my air. '...this disease will…cease to exist.'

My heartbeat was so erratic I wondered if I'd live to hear her answer. Part of me wished I wouldn't. There were only two ways I could see her interpreting my words… 'What was the point of going to so much work to cure a disease that'd only ever affect five people?' or 'Be glad. At least, it'll be over for good.' I didn't know which option was worse, but I'd told her the truth.

She shook her head as if saying it no longer mattered. That was also true.

'Where's Relena?'

'Work.'

Her eyes narrowed at me. 'She didn't know, did she? That you were this ill.'

There really was no need to answer.

Sally sighed, defeated, and sat on the edge of my bed. 'I don't know how you did it… How you managed to hide your condition even at this point.' She shook her head. It was herself she was talking to. 'I remember the first time I saw you… Bullet wounds, broken bones… I thought you were indestructible.'

I couldn't see her smile, but I heard it nonetheless. The honesty and the irony and the innocence of that statement… I laughed.

One last time.

* * *

 **A.N.:** So this concludes my angst ridden saga. I hope you liked it and that you do not despise me for killing some of our most beloved characters. Thanks for reading and, please, let me in on your thoughts? :)


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